Your feet are the literal workhorses of your body, helping with all the movements you perform on your feet, supporting you when seated, and anchoring most of the activities you conduct with your lower body. It’s no wonder they can get overworked, leading to a range of foot problems.
Residents in the Tarzana and Inglewood, California, area trying to cope with foot wounds and other problems can get help from Drs. Ashkan Soleymani, Michael Salih, Arash Jalil, Saman Tabari, and their staff at Cedars Foot and Ankle Center.
Wounds can develop from injuries like scrapes, cuts, and punctures, but if they’re slow healing or keep coming back, they are known as ulcers, which come in two main types:
This is the common form that develops in people struggling with diabetes, which affects over 800 million people globally. It’s also a problem for anyone with impaired sensation in their feet. While they can strike anywhere on your feet, they often happen in the pressure points that are most sensitive to your weight.
Also called peripheral arterial disease, this type causes blood flow to slow down significantly in your extremities which can lead to tissue death. The damage to blood vessels can lead to ulcers on your heels, toes, and underneath your nail beds. Anyone can get an arterial ulcer, but it’s most common in those who smoke or have hypertension, hyperlipidemia (high cholesterol), or diabetes.
If not treated in time, ulcers can get a lot worse, causing infection, extensive tissue damage, and, if it spreads to the muscle and bone, amputation. The severity of ulcers is marked in stages:
Any foot ulcer that gets into the muscle and other underlying tissue is considered severe as it sets the stage for tissue death and gangrene. This is common among people with diabetes (6 out of 10 with the disease will get ulcers), so if you have any signs of them see us as soon as possible.
Wound care is about preserving as much healthy tissue as possible, relieving pressure, and treating the wound itself. Here are our methods for treating foot ulcers:
A treatment to remove dying tissue and replace it with healthy skin from other parts of your body.
A saline mist delivers low-frequency ultrasound to the damaged tissue and stimulates healing and regrowth.
A specialized vacuum device relieves pressure on the wound to reduce its fluid, decrease swelling, and carefully pull the borders together to knit them closed.
A specialized therapy that surrounds the ulcer with pure pressured oxygen that boosts blood oxygen to fight infection and improve healing.
Other options include removing dead tissue from the wound (debridement), and using antibiotics, wound dressings, and specialized shoes to relieve pressure.
Foot ulcers can be dangerous if ignored, so if you’re developing any signs of the problem, make an appointment with Drs. Soleymani, Salih, Jalil, Tabari, and their team at Cedars Foot and Ankle Center today.
